46. The Metal Ladder
The Metal Ladder
Ithink the traces of osimidite are getting to me. I’m light-headed. Not really in my own body. Not really in my own brain. It seems to be fighting against what it’s witnessing, like it doesn’t believe it. It keeps telling me how much he doesn’t look like Cosmer. Couldn’t possibly be Cosmer.
I lift my blouse higher, shaking myself, and clear the last few steps faster. I drop down to him and force my body to do what needs to be done.
His arm is floppy as I grasp it.
But my heart stirs. Because there is warmth under his clammy skin. A faint pulse in his wrist.
I bend over his neck and feel the shallowest of breaths against my cheek.
I exhale so forcefully it hurts my ribs – and at the same time let go of a few tears I didn’t know I’d been holding in.
“Cosmer, you idiot,” I croak.
Then I slap his face. Probably harder than I needed to. But maybe he deserves it.
I thought I might get some reaction from that, but I get nothing.
And I’m miserable.
Because he’s alive. But he could be dying, or his mind could be mush. Unrecoverable.
Unlike what to do if someone has ingested water or is choking, I don’t know anything about how to help someone in this situation.
But I feel surprisingly calm – possibly from the particles of osimidite – and I get an idea. A simple, stupid one – so simple and stupid it might actually work.
Please sober up, I will him. I really need you to sober up, and wake up, so I can get you out of here.
I say the sentences a few times. But if my command is having an effect, it’s not immediate. Cosmer continues to lie there, pale and unresponsive.
I sigh. I didn’t think it would be that easy.
So I decide all I can do – all that is in my power to do – is move him away from here, so that at least he isn’t directly breathing in the thicker fumes surrounding the tank itself.
Carefully, I take his ankles and slide him towards me, so he slips off the tank. I drag him, flat on his back, across the tiled floor towards the archway. I only a manage a few steps before I’m panting, meaning I’m breathing in even more fumes I don’t want to be breathing in.
The heat in here swells. I’m dripping with sweat. I think being in here for too long would fry your brain even without the osimidite floating around.
Soon, I have to stop. He’s too heavy. All of the muscles in my back and shoulders are straining, jarring. And I can’t keep breathing so deeply in here. Who will come to get us – would even find us – if we both became comatose?
Drake, I suddenly think, with unbridled fury.
Drake knows Cosmer came down here. And he hasn’t thought to try to help me. He could get Cosmer’s body moved in ten seconds.
He could have even come down before Cosmer got to this point.
And to think he just proposed to me.
I’m so furious I crash cross-legged to the floor, my eyes fluttering back in their sockets.
I was able to find Old Mother’s mind, and I suppose Ephraine’s, by focusing on the thought of them, picturing where they might have been, and how they might have looked, at that exact moment in time. Homing in on the way they made me feel.
I do the same now for Drake.
He’ll be in his cabin, or just leaving it. He wouldn’t have tried entering my dream from anywhere else on the ship. He’s careful like that. He’ll be looking smug. I rejected his proposal, but he got to deliver me a blow – a wounding one.
And I know exactly what he looks like.
The image I get of him is perfect.
Then, how does he make me feel?
He makes me feel everything I can’t stand feeling. Twists me into a person that disgusts me. A version of myself that is by turns hateful, miserable, infuriated…
Powerful.
He does make me feel powerful. Sometimes.
The magic stays stagnant. It wants more from me.
Sympathy, I think. I do feel sympathy for him. I understand him, to an extent. And –
You know I disagree.
He’d been insinuating something when he said those words.
And maybe he’s right. There is something between us – I’d felt it the first time we met. But I still blame it on the magic we share more than anything else. Our connection is nothing like what I feel for Cosmer.
The magic flares. I suppose that’s what it wanted – my honesty – and I finally see Drake in my mind’s eye.
If he’d thought my world was an unexpectedly dark one, I find his unexpectedly bright.
It’s animated. Full of people. Lartosi lights blink in every direction.
The room is similar to some of the rooms here on The Emperor.
I see copper pipes, levers on platforms, wheels and vents in the windowless walls.
At least two tanks humming, and machines that look like they could be used for anything from exercise to torture.
All along the corridor are what I can only describe as cells.
They’re like large rectangular tin boxes with glass doors.
The more I look at the scene, the more I’m confident this is a prison.
Because each small cell keeps a prisoner locked inside. They all look Rhavnan, and though their overalls are clean and they look generally well-fed and healthy, there’s misery in their eyes, and in the way they sit hunched on their tiny beds or pace their boxes like caged animals.
Several men and women who are clearly Lartosi with their fair hair and grey-hued skin dash along the corridor. They’re carrying equipment or taking notes. They remind me of the doctor in the Palace, who could be their twin.
“Drake?” I ask, my voice shaking.
The scene freezes.
One at a time, the doctors and inmates disappear like they’re being plucked out from the image. The cells themselves are warping, spiralling, like a wheel is turning and the world has been caught in its prongs.
“Drake,” I say again. “It’s okay—”
I’m interrupted by the sound of clinking against metal – tapping – and a girl crying. She sounds so young. Drake, she says. Is that you? Are you still there?
And I’m being pushed back.
I’ve seen something he didn’t want me to see.
The compound.
He wasn’t the only captive, because these people – other Rhavnans – were being bled, too.
I shout out to him, wherever he is.
“Drake, I don’t have time for this. I’m not prying in your head. I don’t care what’s in your head. Well, I do, but you know what I mean. I just need you to help me with Cosmer. I can’t move him, and I’m breathing in a lot of the gas myself—”
He appears directly in front of me. Shadows leak out from under his boots.
“No,” he says, simply.
I try to shove him – but go right through him.
“But this is your fault! You knew he was down there. You could have woken me, or helped him, or stopped him from going down there at all! Or…”
I let the sentence hang. Because his face is as dark as the shadows surrounding him. His eyes are cast down but look red and raw, like he’s been scrubbing at them.
How strange.
His voice is more dangerous than I’ve ever known it as he rasps, “I will never help him – or help you help him – again, in this lifetime, or in any other.”
“Why?” I yell. “Why won’t you help? Why are you being like this?”
I’m being pushed out again, and the shadows descend on me like a cloud of bats.
“You know why,” I hear, in my head.
The shadows dissipate and I stumble, landing awkwardly on my thighs back in the Chamber.
I don’t know why. And I want to sit here and seethe, but I know I have more important things to do. I glance over at Cosmer – and see he’s moving.
He’s rolled himself over, onto his side, and now his chest is rising and falling. A faint sound is leaving his lips.
He’s chuckling to himself.
But as I crawl over to him, I feel more dread than I do hope.
“Cosmer?”
His eyes remain shut.
“I’ll get you up—”
But he talks over me. “Drake,” he says, in a decisive way. Like he’s worked something out.
I use both of my hands to loop his arm around my shoulder and get him resting on me. His head lolls into my neck.
Humouring him, I ask, quietly, “What about Drake?”
He states, in the husky, high-pitched voice I associate now with osimidite, “He’s the person you were engaged to.”
The words keep me suspended.
“I…” I begin, about to deny it.
But I can’t. I love him too much to lie to him outrightly.
“Yes. But it doesn’t matter, because I have a plan. Like I told you.”
But it’s like he didn’t hear that part at all. Only the yes.
Because he just murmurs, “Drake is a prince. The Prince.”
“Yes,” I say again.
He says nothing else.
I haul him up to a standing position and walk us jaggedly over to the ladder. He can take steps, but barely. I’m supporting almost his full weight.
But it’s okay. As long as I can get him out of here, we’ll be fine.
The closer we get, the more I can breathe again. The cooler, fresher air is taunting.
I’ve almost got us to safety, I let myself think. I can’t quite believe I’ve managed it, but I have.
We finally reach the ladder.
“Do you think you can climb it, if I go first and pull you up?”
His answer is immediate. “I can’t do it.”
“Can you at least try for me? I don’t want to have to leave you to get help.”
Because I don’t trust you not to go right back to the tank.
He lets out an odd laugh.
His eyes flicker open.
They’re frightening. His pupils are huge, an effect only enhanced by the thick bags under his eyes, like he hasn’t slept in years.
The whites of his eyes are bloodier than ever, and his irises are no longer a rich, beautiful brown.
Now, they’re a dull, flat stony colour. If death came in colour, it would be this.
“Not the ladder, Ara,” he sighs. “Being with you.”
I almost drop him.
I croak, stupidly, “What did you say?” Because maybe I misheard him.
“It’s over,” he says, flatly yet giddily. “Our relationship is over.”
I’m breathing faster for a few seconds.
But then I’m softening.
Osimidite, I remember.
Just the osimidite talking.
Opting to ignore him, the way I would the ramblings of one of the regular drunks back in Vikemy, I get him to hold onto the ladder and stand there while I climb it, going up two or three rungs of it until I’m a head taller than him.
Then I turn and guide him to me, my hands on his shoulders to keep him balanced. I help him take the first few wobbly steps up to the rung I’m standing on. Then I get myself higher again and repeat the process.
It’s aggravating, but it’s working.
Until, when we’re still only halfway up, he stalls.
“Cosmer,” I say, gritted. “I need you to keep climbing. So I can get you to our cabin – or maybe even the infirmary—”
“You don’t believe me,” he states, bluntly. He sounds surprisingly sober.
“Believe what?”
“That I’m breaking up with you.”
“Because you’re not,” I snap. “You’ve probably inhaled enough osimidite to calm a raging bull—”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” he says, with a grating, choked sort of laugh. “You’ve been playing me—”
My mouth drops. “Playing you?”
“We argue, and I try to tell you something important, but then you tell me exactly what I want to hear, and I just end up forgiving you…” His voice is slow and slurring, yet clear. I hear every painful word. “And you lie, Ara.”
“I lie,” I echo.
“You could have told me who you were engaged to. You also could have told me what happened with Ephraine when I asked you—”
I almost laugh myself. “Ephraine? What does he have to do with this?”
He sways on the ladder.
Calmly, he says, “You killed him, didn’t you?”
It’s like I’m swaying now.
He was never supposed to know.
I part my mouth to answer him, but he’s speaking again.
“It was something Meg said. About how he would have needed to have been made against his will. And that’s what you do, isn’t it? Make people do things against their will.”
“You don’t know what Ephraine did to all of us, Cosmer. He’s basically the reason Riss died—”
“Your magic,” he interrupts, in a tone I can only describe as cruel. “Is the reason Riss died.”
I flinch.
I’m sinking. Being downed. I don’t know how I’m still upright.
“N-No. You don’t think that.”
Cosmer holds his hand up. “And even if Ephraine did play a part in it, he didn’t deserve to die without a trial.
Or even for you to kill him without so much as a conversation with someone.
” He backs up. Takes a step down the ladder.
“Who are you going to decide deserves it next, Ara? What if, one day, you decide it’s me? ”
“Cosmer,” I say, gasping. Because this is ridiculous. And terrifying. “You don’t…” I look up at the hatch. It’s so close that it could be miles away. “Let’s just talk about all of this when you’re sober—”
“I am sober,” he insists. “Or at least, sobering. I can feel it. You used your magic on me again. It’s the same way I felt in the brig after you left – suddenly stone cold sober – which just makes me want it more.
There are consequences to your actions – I’ve told you that before – but you just do things, over and over, no matter how many times I tell you not to—”
Stay strong.
Stay strong.
Stay strong.
We are almost at the hatch.
“I’m not entertaining your huffed-up ramblings. Keep walking.”
“No. I’m staying down here.”
He takes another step down, tugging a hand down his scalp, which dishevels his tangled hair further.
“Because this is all fucked. Do you not see that? I’m going to a country where I don’t even speak the language. My mother is dead. Riss is dead. Our village is ash. My ship is gone – all the ships are gone. All I can think about is osimidite again. And all of it is your fault!”
Time stretches out. It’s infinite, and it’s cruel.
Cosmer wavers in and out in front of me. He’s standing under a light now, particles of osimidite lilting around his head like fireflies.
“None of that is my fault,” I say, cracked.
He looks up at me with those dull eyes with nothing but blame. Like it was me that drained the nutrients in them. Sucked them dry.
“From where I’m standing, Ara, it sort of looks like it is. I’m completely ruined while you get to go home – your real home – and be the queen of the man whose name you say in your sleep.”
My foot jerks off the rung like a reflex. The movement almost makes me slip.
I’m close to sobs, even with the traces of osimidite calming me, blocking me from feeling the sting of his words fully. “I don’t say—”
“You did, Ara,” he says, in a lifeless way that will haunt me forever. “You did.”
So that’s what it all boils down to, under the flame.
He’s angry about everything else. He blames me for so much.
But it’s something I had no control over at all that’s unforgivable to him.
I’ve made many mistakes in my life.
I never thought falling asleep in the arms of someone I loved would be one of them.